Day 15

15 February 2013

Another chilly morning and we did sleep in a little, but we had to be out of the park by 10am so we had to get up and pack to head off to our next town.

We were making tracks to Katoomba for 2 reasons, 1. We wanted to avoid Sydney at all costs and 2. This town passes near the Blue Mountains and there are some nice attractions to be seen in this area.

Campervan in tow and we are off. Good news, we managed to last 3 nights and 4 whole days without stuffing up the boom gates or amenities codes and had seamless entry and exits from the park and toilets!

Katoomba is about 4 hours from Nelson Bay so it was a little bit of a hike to get to Katoomba however there is more good news in that the "mole" i referred to a couple of days ago got us to Katoomba Falls Caravan Park with no issues whatsover, so thanks mole. haha.

The freeways were ok to here, some were a bit rough and there is a part on the Greater Western Highway that I started to think, what the hell is Sydney doing, it was like the Nicklin Way on Sunshine Coast except with all freight trains and idiot drivers everywhere! We did come out of it unscathed so I am not going to complain! On the flipside some of these freeways are really scenic as there is huge rock walls along the edges and also through the middle of the freeway. These roads are of course toll roads, as nothing is free anymore! To pay these tolls you have to set up a visitor Epass via the roam.com.au website which lasts 30 days and takes the tolls from your credit card as you pass through them.

Anyway, made it to the caravan park and unpacked the van on our site. From this park there is quite a few attractions that you can walk to... Scenic World, Katoomba Falls, Echo Point, Three Sisters etc. We had researched Scenic World as it has cableways, skyways, walks and is normally the home of the steepest railway in Australia (however at the moment this is closed : ( ). We had some lunch and decided to head to Scenic World, it is a short 10 min walk through bushland and you are there. Now it is Friday, a day that as far as I know is a work day, and it was super busy!! Tour buses everywhere!! It is $28 per adult to get unlimited rides and access to Scenic World so we decided to go with this option.

Skyway first and this is suspended in the air above the Katoomba Falls and you can also see the Three Sisters and Orphan Rock. There is also a glass floor in the middle of the cable car which is quite trippy when you stand on it and look down.

 

Katoomba Falls

The Three Sisters

Orphan Rock

Once at the other end you can hop off the car and take a walk to the Katoomba Falls or a lookout on the other side; however we were a bit buggered from a long drive and decided to be lazy and stay on the skyway to go back to the main building and then hop on the Cableway.

This photo doesn't look real but I took it today!

 

The cableway is downstairs and drops down into the rainforest floor below, it drops you at a boardwalk that goes in all different directions to rainforest walks or to the old coal mine. We chose the old coal mine walk which is only about 15 mins. There was so many people along this boardwalk at one point we stopped to let a stampede of elephants (tourists) past so we didn't get trampled! The coal mine had a tunnel which was called the ventilation tunnel, which allowed air to filter through the mine when workers were down there, you could look into the tunnel and when you did, the temperature of the air coming from the tunnel was at least 10 degrees colder than the boardwalk!




At the end of this walk is where the railway normally goes, however at the moment it just looks like a construction site with a lot of bright coloured t shirt men standing around looking like they are doing nothing. (I always wonder as we pass roadworks also, if all the people that were standing doing nothing at these areas actually did something constantly, would it be finished by now??) Would have been pretty good to go on the railway but just came at the wrong time! It was built in 1947 so it is probably due for a replacement!

We then walked back and lined up to get the Cableway back up to the main building. Took the quick stroll back to our van and we are now huddled in the van with our sleeping bags as it is pretty cold here today, this is also as there has not been any sun today and has been a bit rainy all day. I would definitely recommend Scenic World to people in the area, it was a good way to see a bit of everything all at once and you can spend the whole day there travelling back and forth on the cableways and skyways if you want to, there is also a cafe and a souvenir shop to keep you busy.

We are off again tomorrow to Oberon (we think) as this is closer to the Jenolan Caves and it is a lot cheaper than Katoomba to stay.

Carly & Joel

 

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